By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
In the space of two weeks, the omicron variant has sent South Africa from a period of low transmission to rapid growth of new confirmed cases. The country’s numbers are still relatively low, with 2,828 new confirmed cases recorded on Friday, but omicron’s speed in infecting young people has alarmed health professionals.
The variant has prompted several countries to impose restrictions such as travel bans on several southern African countries, while others have imposed fresh lockdowns over the new strain.
“We’re seeing a marked change in the demographic profile of patients with COVID-19,” Rudo Mathivha, head of the intensive care unit at Soweto’s Baragwanath Hospital, told an online press briefing.
Mathivha says more young people are being hospitalised and worried that as the numbers go up, the public institutions are to be overwhelmed.”
She said urgent preparations are needed to enable public hospitals to cope with a potential large influx of patients needing intensive care.
“We know we have a new variant,” said Mathivha. “The worst case scenario is that it hits us like delta … we need to have critical care beds ready.”
What looked like a cluster infection among some university students in Pretoria ballooned into hundreds of new cases and then thousands, first in the capital city and then to nearby Johannesburg.
Studying the surge, scientists identified the new variant that diagnostic tests indicate is likely responsible for as many as 90% of the new cases, according to health officials. Early studies show that it has a reproduction rate of 2 — meaning that every person infected by it is likely to spread it to two other people.
The new variant has a high number of mutations that appear to make it more transmissible and help it evade immune responses. The World Health Organization looked at the data on Friday and named the variant omicron, under its system of using Greek letters, calling it a highly transmissible variant of concern.
A key factor is vaccination. The new variant appears to be spreading most quickly among those who are unvaccinated.
Currently, only about 40 percent of adult South Africans are vaccinated, and the number is much lower among those in the 20 to 40-year-old age group.
South Africa has nearly 20 million doses of vaccines — made by Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson — but the numbers of people getting vaccines is about 120,000 per day, far below the government’s target of 300,000 per day.
Wits University Professor of Vaccinology,Shabir Mahdi says government must ensure health care facilities are prepared ,not only on paper- but actually resourced with staff, PPE and oxygen and must also provide booster dose of J&J or Pfizer to all adults who received a single dose of J&J- it’s needed to increase protection against severe Covid.